What a perfect Halloween story: a zombie political issue that just won’t die, no matter how many times city council tries to kill it.

I’m talking about a Windsor-only form of insanity here, the inexplicable obsession some in this city have with creating an auditor-general’s office at City Hall.

Mayor Drew Dilkens and the sensible half of city council put another stake through the heart of this scary issue Thursday night – a big win for them and for taxpayers who don’t like to see their money wasted on empty symbols.

But don’t expect it to end here. “The AG” issue will be back on the city agenda a year from now.

I’ll try to explain this in a way that won’t make sensitive readers start tying slipknots and looking for a nearby beam to sling it over. Because it really is an empty, excruciatingly pointless argument, in the way only municipal politics can be:

One half of council claims that having an “independent” full-time auditor general with an accounting degree ensconced in an office at City Hall will catch evildoers, reduce waste, and save money. Hiring one with an assistant would cost $286,000 per year to start.

The other half of council says: are you people nuts? Windsor already pays a private firm $300,000 a year to do that job. And they really are independent since they don’t work in City Hall and eat with us in the cafeteria. And we can save $3 million per decade by not duplicating services.

Besides, the last in-house AG and previous city auditor didn’t work out in a way that cost taxpayers a lot of money. A big waste, for people who were supposed to save money.

And that’s about it. Council has now debated this issue four times, wasting tens of thousands of dollars on staff reports and making most sensible people suicidal with boredom in the process.

Thursday’s debate was the worst yet, dragging on for more than five pointless hours. If you’d been tortured by being forced to listen to it, you probably wouldn’t have had a clue what they were discussing. At the end, Dilkens stepped in to break a tie and kill the plan. Again.

I had been worried Dilkens didn’t have the stuff former Mayor Eddie Francis had, the ability to be tough and fearless. But this issue proved he has it, along with the Phd.

The losers were the Liberal party wing of council, who were openly trying to wrest control of the city away from Dilkens and the cost-cutting crowd that has run City Hall for the past decade. To the great satisfaction of voters, I might add.

The debate wasn’t on cable TV because Coun. Bill Marra, the author of the latest attempt to hire an AG, couldn’t be there Monday, and today, Oct. 31, is the deadline for asking the province to amend the Municipal Act.

And that’s just how the issue ended: over the wishes of Marra, Irek Kusmierczyk, Rino
Bortolin, Chris Holt and Ed Sleiman, the rest of council voted to ask Ontario to create a floating Auditor-General office that can be sent to investigate accounting problems in municipalities anywhere in the province.

Several other provinces have these province-wide AGs, and it saves smaller cities the cost of hiring their own – who wouldn’t be of much use to anyone anyhow, since they aren’t outsiders and aren’t specialized, like real freelance auditors.

Ironically, it was a real live auditor who pointed out to council that hiring an AG probably would not be a wise use of taxpayers’ money. “What problem are we trying to solve?” was how city CAO Helga Reidel gently put it. She used to be one of those auditors, and can’t recommend spending the extra money.

But her professional opinion doesn’t matter to Windsor’s political left, and some in the media, to whom the AG issue has become a kind of talisman. Or vendetta.

“It’s all about control of the agenda,” Dilkens said Friday afternoon as he surveyed the aftermath. “A group is trying to control it.” And who should control council’s agenda? “Traditionally, the mayor does.”

Dilkens doesn’t think the issue is over, either. “Based on the passion I saw last night, I’m guessing they’re going to bring this back to council as soon as they can.” Which they can’t do for a full year. “We can do this every year if the want.”

Wonderful. But at least we can put the idea back in the closet with the Halloween decorations for the next 12 months.

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